3 Oct 2012

CIT’s Problem 2: Business Distorted Picture of IT

Today, the business
community plays a determinant role in the final outcome of the project. They formulate
their needs, provide information, take decisions and determine priorities. They
have also expectations and goals. They interact and collaborate with IT. Decisions,
choices, attitude, approach and positioning are all in accordance with the
image they have of IT.

The business community has
a certain perception of IT. This picture they have in mind is based on their
knowledge of IT. It is based on their experience with IT and on what they see
of IT. This mental picture determines their belief system and will guide their
decisions and give shape to the collaboration with IT. This doesn’t only
concern the collaboration inside or outside the IT projects. It influences the
positioning and collaboration at higher level as well.

The business community is
working for years with computers. Most possess their own computer. They have
also worked with plenty of end-user software. The business community knows that
part of IT that is visible to consumers and end-users. This is only the surface
of IT. This is what the market presents to them, the hardware, the content on
the screen and the user experience. They got accustomed with only a certain
facet of IT. Their experience is rather one-sided.

One of the roles of IT is
to hide complexity from the end-users. The business community, or non-IT
people, has much lesser the opportunity to dive below the visible surface and
to learn IT from different perspectives.

Consequently, the business
community has a distorted picture of IT. This picture leads to a reference
framework of beliefs driving their thinking, their attitude, their expectations
and their judgement. Since the picture is distorted and incomplete, the
reference framework is biased picture.

What is this picture look
like? The common main aspects are the following:

·IT is about technologies

·IT is toyish

·In IT you can just try things out

·IT is easy

·IT offers high quality products

·IT products can be acquired very easily and quickly.
It takes no time to create IT products

·IT is about plugging things together

·Everything is possible in IT

First of all, IT is about technologies, or at least
this is the essence. Does “IT” not stand for “Information Technologies”? And
the IT department has competencies in these technologies and they manage them.

There are plenty of
computer games on the market. Multimedia is another domain offering a lot of
fun. But also modern software and websites are colourful and contain plenty of
pictures, funny sounds and animations. From operating system to smart phone,
they all look like toys. Who is scared of toys? They don't harm. They are fun. This idea sells. IT is like a toy.

The toyish appearance of IT
products and their intuitive interfaces invites users to experiment. It makes
the IT products more accessible. They stimulate people to try things. If it
isn’t right, a user can easily correct or change it or even throw it away and
restart. There is no need to think too much upfront. To support the
trial-and-"correct" approach, the manufacturers implement different
concepts like cut-&-paste, drag-n-drop, templates, do and undo, wizards and
WYSIWYG. This reduces the risks for the user. The products are nearly fool
proof. IT is about trying things out.

People become technology
savvy. They can create quite a lot of interesting IT products through extremely
flexible interfaces, wizards and the WYSIWYG-concept. What can we not do with
only “one click”? The user interface perfectly hides the underlying size and
complexity of the system. “Plug and play” is another concept that supports
simplicity. Some people have some programming experience with writing macro’s
in spread sheets or personal databases. Plenty of tools are available to
develop personal websites. With little knowledge and even without experience
one can already develop quickly a small software application. IT is really not that difficult.

The computerised devices in
the shops are getting always smarter and more powerful. End-user software,
ranging from office software to games, has extremely powerful and flexible
interfaces. All this technology and end-user software creates high expectations
in terms of properties of the software.People expect high quality IT products.

Technology comes to us very
fast. IT offers plenty of technological innovations. Every day new computerised
devices and new software applications appear on the market. People can simply
buy it and use it. We don’t have the time to learn a product. A new version is
already available in the shops or the competitor offers something better.
Marketing pushes people to buy all kinds of new products and to replace old
products by their latest version.Plenty
of services are developed and can be bought. Buy and you have it. It’s that
simple. This is what marketing guys let us to believe. IT products can be acquired very easily.

We see more and more new
technologies and products appearing on the market that works together. Just
plug it in on with little configuration and they can work together. It’s just a
matter of assembling components. There is even the story of two bankers
planning to merge their banks who thought that, to have two computers of the
two banks to work together it was just a matter of putting the two computers together
and to connect them. IT is about
plugging things together.

Everything is possible in
IT. It is amazing how many times end-users think that
computers can interpret situations, take decisions or read minds. This becomes
apparent when business people tell you that “the computer knows that ...”.
Often, they are not able to explain the exact process behind this knowing. Of
course, there is “artificial intelligence” (AI) and tools to scan the
electromagnetic waves of the brain. But when we consider the project and its budget
and time schedule, it is clear that it is not realistic to make use of them.

There
was a period that the motto “the sky is the limit” was associated with IT. This
motto reflects a general idea of IT that creates
high expectations. Is everything really possible in IT? Yes, but …

When
we consider all these factors together, it is not surprising that the
results achieved by the IT department may have been a great
disillusion.

These beliefs may be
present in different degrees in the picture business people have of corporate
IT. And from the perspective of the end-user and consumer, this appealing
picture might appear as being correct. But it remains a very superficial and
one-sided picture when we consider corporate IT.

The business community may,
to some degree, be aware that there is a part of IT that is rather unknown to
them. They may consider this as a black box. Sometimes they may suppose that
what happens inside the black box, inside the IT department, is very complex.
And sometimes they may suppose that it’s all magic or that it isn’t that
difficult at all and that everything is possible.

If these incorrect beliefs
are used to influence or guiding IT, then we might be in serious trouble.